Vatican II Happened for a reason

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It’s important to distinguish the pre-conciliar church in the USA from the pre-conciliar church in Europe.

In Europe, the decline of the Church was a real fact. Countries like France-- one known as solidly Catholic-- were in the final throws of secularization that began with the French Revolution. Spain was closing Churches, Eastern Europe was leaving Rome pretty quickly.

In the USA, it was entirely the opposite. The 50’s through 1965 were a real golden age for the Church in the States. Mass attendence had never been higher; conversions, ordinations, religious orders, Catholic schools, Catholic marriages, solid orthodoxy and real Catholic practice was at its absolute peak before the Council.

I always recommend to people interested in learning more about the Church before and after the Council to try and find The Index of Leading Catholic Indicators. The book has fallen out of print, but tradtional bookstores usually know how to get copies. The Index is just a book of charts and graphs with VERY LITTLE commentary other than the numbers. Spending an hour with the book will show you the total dismantlement of the Church in America after the Council. It’s enough to make you feel very sad.

Politico (and fellow Catholic) Pat Buchanan wrote the forward to the book. His wording is over-the-top rhetoric (and a classic example of Buchanan’s style), but it’s striking. The forward is reprinted here and shows the real toll the Council took on the Church. In the USA, moderization didn’t mean survival, it meant massacre.
 
I asked the question because the priest who teaches RCIA at St. John Cantius in Chicago mentioned a while back that there WERE abuses before VII. After going to Mass a few times in Tulsa here, I was wondering if rushing through the Mass, not giving Jesus His due respect was one of them. I went to Mass twice in Wagner, OK. I didn’t get some of the things they did at Holy Cross, either.
 
WhollyRoamin said:
It’s important to distinguish the pre-conciliar church in the USA from the pre-conciliar church in Europe.

In Europe, the decline of the Church was a real fact. Countries like France-- one known as solidly Catholic-- were in the final throws of secularization that began with the French Revolution. Spain was closing Churches, Eastern Europe was leaving Rome pretty quickly.
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This is a good point. Do you know what the situation was like in Latin America? I think it may have been similar to Europe, at least in some countries, but I’m not sure.
 
It also bears pointing out that the liturgical movement began a couple decades before Vatican II. Many churches were “wreckovated” beforehand. Here’s an example–all of these photos are from the same Church–the latest is from 1957 (it is interesting to notice the ad orientam posture, with the tabernacle still on the altar).:

http://www.usml.edu/liturgicalinsti...bit/sacred heart before rnovation for web.jpg
http://www.usml.edu/liturgicalinstitute/exhibits/hillenbrand exhibit/HB after renovation for web.jpg
http://www.usml.edu/liturgicalinstitute/exhibits/hillenbrand exhibit/HB at Mass 2 for web.jpg
usml.edu/liturgicalinstitute/exhibits/hillenbrand%20exhibit/sacred%20heart%20parish.html
 
adstrinity said:
I asked the question because the priest who teaches RCIA at St. John Cantius in Chicago mentioned a while back that there WERE abuses before VII. After going to Mass a few times in Tulsa here, I was wondering if rushing through the Mass, not giving Jesus His due respect was one of them. I went to Mass twice in Wagner, OK. I didn’t get some of the things they did at Holy Cross, either.
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I would just take his words at face value. I’ve learned that “abuses” is a very relative term-- altar girls is considered “abuse” by some and an asset to others.

But it is true that some… experimentation… started to happen in the 1950’s. I saw once (and cannot find again) a photo from the newly-opened 1950’s parish “Christ the King” in the Waldo neighborhood of my hometown, beautiful Kansas City. The alter was a free-standing altar with the tabernacle perched in the middle. Father would offer the TLM versus populum– the photo was captioned “The Mass of the Future!”

It was this photo, but was reprinted in a newspaper or something. I wish I could find the original scrap from its printing:
http://www.ctkkcmo.org/images/altar.JPG
(check out the candle arrangement! And all those altar boys-- in proper choir dress!)

Many would call this action an “abuse”. Perhaps they’re right. This could be what the priest at Cantius was talking about. But I’d let him do his own explaining. 🙂
 
daughteroftruth said:
You’re not wrong, I’ve read it in numerous places; tried finding it online, but the only link I got was in Italian:(

vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/homilies/1972/documents/hf_p-vi_hom_19720629_it.html
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Here is the part that talks about the smoke of Satan
Referring to the situation of the Church of today, the Holy Father says that you have the feeling that some crack has entered the smoke of Satan in the temple of God. " There is doubt, uncertainty, problems, anxiety, dissatisfaction, confrontation. Do not trust most of the Church, and we trust the first profane prophet who comes to speak to some newspaper or some social motorcycle chasing and ask him if he has the formula of true life. And do not feel that they already masters and masters us. He joined the doubt in our minds, and entered for windows which were open to light. Science, which is done to give us a truth that no God but by posting it to make search more and celebrate with greater intensity, came the rather critical, it’s doubtful. Scientists who are more thoughtful and more painfully the opposite curve. And end up teaching: “I do not know, we do not know, we can not know.” The school gym becomes confusing and sometimes absurd contradictions. It celebrates the progress in order to then demolish the revolutions strangest and most radical, to deny all that has been won, to return after so primitive exalted the progress of the modern world.
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If you look at the opening statement you will see that there was nothing that said the faith changed.
So essentially there is not pre-Vatican II or Post Vatican II faith. It is all one faith we believe exactly the same.

Unfortunately many misrepresent the council, you can see it in their view of the council, this outlook is very common in the Church today. Someone would say something like, “this person doesn’t accept Vatican II”, or “they are a pre-Vatican II Catholic”
What did Vatican II teach dogmatically? Nothing.
So accept that it happened?
Or accept it as a new faith, in a “spirit of Vatican II” understanding? Most faithful catholics do not accept that, since many propose things and promote things never mentioned in the Council and which contradict the faith.
So wouldn’t a Pre-Vatican II Catholic believe the same as a Post-Vatican II Catholic? Isn’t it the same faith?

Now we all take advantage of the Council, since it did mention things like modern communication, and if you are reading this you are using modern communication.

Yet you can certainly say that the Council was purposely worded ambiguously by those progressive seeking to subvert the faith and allow the Council to be twisted to be misinterpreted. Unfortunately many understand the Council without looking at the rest of the faith, even though the Council quotes from the Bible, previous Councils, etc.

Did the Council state we should remove Latin?
Did the Council state that we should turn around the Altars?
Did the Council state that all religions are the same?
Did the Council state that religious should shed their outward signs of faith, their habits and rebel against the Church?

Yet, we act in ways that the Council and the faith never was meant to be understood.

We are in sad shape, but everyone tries to act like everything is fine.

In Christ
Scylla
 
From what I understand Vatican II was convened as a pastoral council.

You see, many of the protestant faiths began to get more exposure due to the technological advances of the time. Specifically telivision and the advent of televised services. Many catholics saw these services on television and some of what they witnessed appealed to them. The Church, being pastoral felt the need to try to bring some of these elements into the Church with the idea that it would give broader allowances in how believers worshiped and and yet retain membership in the Church. The thought was that if the certain elements of protestant worship that appealed to catholics were adopted by the Church, that the Church would experience growth and be reinvigorated. The intentions of Vatican II were all for the right reasons. Unfortunately, it seems that the results were not what was expected.
 
There’s a widely held belief that those who criticise V2 the most, have not even read the documents and simply attack it on the basis that the Catholic Church began going seriously downhill after the Council. Quite to the contrary, much of the damage done can be attributed to certain of it’s documents. Nostra Aetate, Gaudium et Spes and Ad Gentes promoted a thinly veiled universalist approach to religion and sometimes downright marginalized the necessity of belief in Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation. And of course, Sacrosanctum Concillium was the excuse given to ransack our churches of statues, paintings and stained glass windows with a Calvinistic zeal.
 
It wasn’t the Council that led to the decline of the Church in America; that’s really the classic A preceded B, therefore A caused B. It was the death of the Catholic neighborhood that ended that time in America, and the death of the Catholic neighborhood was caused by the death of the inner-city, and the abandonment of the inner-city by American society at large.

Many Catholic neighborhoods (including the two that my parents grew up in) made it as far as the middle of the 1970’s, and then disintegrated with the rest of the city. Vatican II didn’t cause drug use to skyrocket and kids to drop dead in the middle of their streets from abusing them. It didn’t cause white flight out of the suburbs, or Richard Nixon to dismantle the Great Society.

Once the Catholic neighborhood broke up, though, the idea of the parish as the center of life died with it. You weren’t walking to Mass on Sunday morning anymore, and the Catholic school gym wasn’t where you played basketball. Now people were in the suburbs, and they had no neighborhood, or they were still in a city with nothing but memories of how great things used to be.

No Vatican council could have predicted or prevented that. Whether the Mass was in English, Latin, or Mandarin Chinese, we’d still face the problem that the old Catholic neighborhoods died, and they were going to die without or without a new form of the Mass.
 
Not to get bogged down in the details, it is my understanding that the intent behind V2 was to address a growing attitude problem among the faithful. Specifically it was the observation of many that that laity perceived the faith to be a list of minimum requirements necessary to perform in order to be granted access to eternal bliss. Real faith and holiness were for priests and nuns and the rest of us need not do much more than show up for sacraments, put money in the basket and occasionally do as father tells them to do.

I think what John XXIII really wanted of the council was to reiterate to the faithfull that we are ALL called to be disciples of Christ, all called to personal and mystical relationship with Him, all called to holiness, not just on Sunday but in our whole lives. I think he worried that we were becoming less and less salt and light in the world.

I don’t think most of our problems today come from Vatican II. I think most were already small, but fast grwoing weeds BEFORE V2 that continued to get worse afterwards. Councils never take immediate effect and often cause initial confusion and turmoil. We are living through a normal post-council period, history just doesn’t record very well how it feels to live in such a time.

Charles Curran and his ilk were not products of the Vatican council. There were all to many like him BEFORE the council came along. If Vatican II is the source of the problem, what explains how guys like him got so screwed up?
 
Ambiguous language is still deceitful, and the Council was full of it. That is the problem: it wasn’t clear. Has anyone here read the documents of past Councils? They’re rather hard to interpret in a Protestant light, unlike this last.
 
daughteroftruth said:
Ambiguous language is still deceitful, and the Council was full of it. That is the problem: it wasn’t clear. Has anyone here read the documents of past Councils? They’re rather hard to interpret in a Protestant light, unlike this last.
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The same old mantra. Instead of repeating it ad nauseum, how about actually showing us just exactly where in the documents all these ambiguities occur?
 
Frosty said:
The same old mantra. Instead of repeating it ad nauseum, how about actually showing us just exactly where in the documents all these ambiguities occur?
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are you sure you want this question answered, Frosty? Books have been written answering your question.
 
Frosty said:
The same old mantra. Instead of repeating it ad nauseum, how about actually showing us just exactly where in the documents all these ambiguities occur?
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Could you please tell me how the Council is constantly distorted *if *there are no ambiguities?

How exactly is something direct and clear going to be misinterpreted by learned theologians?

How can Catholics *and *liberal “Catholics” both justify their positions with the Council if the truth is so obvious?
 
I’ll give you un-ambiguous statements from V2.

LUMEN GENTIUM 16

But the plan of salvation ( propositum salutis ) also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place ( in primis ) among these there are the Moslems, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind ( qui fidem Abrahae se tenere profitentes, nobiscum Deum adorant unicum, etc. ).

NOSTRA AETATE 2

Thus in Hinduism, men contemplate the divine mystery and express it through an unspent fruitfulness of myths and through searching philosophical inquiry. They seek release from the anguish of our human condition through ascetical practices or deep meditation or a loving, trusting flight toward God.

GAUDIUM ET SPES 36

"…[All] believers of whatever religion have always heard His revealing voice in the discourse of creatures
That's just scratching the surface.
 
maurin said:
are you sure you want this question answered, Frosty? Books have been written answering your question.
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I would not have asked the question if I didn’t wish an answer. I have read several books on Vatican II, both pro and con. What I am interested in is what the posters who constantly repeat the notion of “full of ambiguities” actually have to say for themselves. Not merely cutting and pasting from other sources that fit their individual ideologic leanings and parroting the “party line”.
 
I disagree with those who say that Vatican II caused the crisis in the Church. Rather, I think it was a reaction to the problems that were already fomenting in the world. Secularism was already gripping Europe by the throat (and had especially infected France since the French Revolution in the 19th century). It was beginning to seep into American culture and was already in the process of undermining the puritan-like Protestant culture there (such as the results of the Lambeth Council on artificial contraception being accepted by most denominations prior to the 1960s). At the same time, technology was making the world a vastly smaller place. No one can argue that radio and television (and later the internet) have not had a revolutionary impact on the way people think and view the world. Pope John XXIII wanted to address this and felt that if he could present the Church’s message in a new way that could appeal to a vastly different world (without changing doctrine) then perhaps the Church could thrive in the modern world.

In this sense, I think Vatican II appears to us as a failure. Church attendance is down dramatically, vocations are down terribly in the West (but thriving in other parts of the world), heresy infected the seminaries (especially in moral theology), Catholics en masse revolted on the topic of artificial contraception, among other problems. These were problems that would have occurred without the council though. They are primarily problems with secularism that infected the Western modern world. It will be interesting to see how the effects of the council play out throughout this century.

I would argue that the primary reason the Church is suffering is due to external pressures from secularism (which argues that the Church is archaic and doesn’t matter) and the internal pressures from traitors like Charles Curran who have sold the laity on the idea that it is morally licit to dissent from the magisterium.
 
Frosty said:
I would not have asked the question if I didn’t wish an answer. I have read several books on Vatican II, both pro and con. What I am interested in is what the posters who constantly repeat the notion of “full of ambiguities” actually have to say for themselves. Not merely cutting and pasting from other sources that fit their individual ideologic leanings and parroting the “party line”.
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Maybe we should start a different thread to answer your question? It’s a good question, and gives us all the opportunity to present the words of the Documents themselves. I do have a couple in mind.

However, before we delve into such a project, I think that I would be interested in hearing your answer to the question posed to you below:
daughteroftruth said:
Could you please tell me how the Council is constantly distorted *if *there are no ambiguities?

How exactly is something direct and clear going to be misinterpreted by learned theologians?

How can Catholics *and *liberal “Catholics” both justify their positions with the Council if the truth is so obvious?
Click to expand...
 
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